Abstract
Grand challenges such as climate change, global health crises, inequality, and biodiversity loss are persistent societal concerns rather than problems with clear endpoints or definitive solutions. Rather than being “solved,” these challenges must be continually engaged, managed, and navigated over time, as progress unfolds through ongoing efforts to mobilize action and coordinate across organizational and institutional boundaries. This ongoing engagement often proceeds in the absence of shared problem definitions, agreed-upon metrics, or stable criteria for success. This symposium brings together recent research on how organizations and institutions engage grand challenges when authority is limited, evaluations are contested, and expectations shift. The papers highlight that engagement is shaped by the social and institutional processes through which effort is mobilized, legitimacy is constructed, and value is assigned. Across cases spanning corporate pledges, meta-organizations, global evaluation systems, and prosocial certifications, the papers show how actors sustain collective action by recalibrating commitments, coordinating effort, and constructing legitimacy under contestation. Together, the symposium advances a process view of organizing for grand challenges by showing how legitimacy and value are continuously negotiated when formal authority and stable evaluation criteria are absent.
How Social Activism Shapes Corporate Sustainability Pledges
Author: Yeon Woo Cho; The George Washington University
How Western Norms Shape the Recognition of Non-Western Efforts
Author: Ryosuke Yokoya; The George Washington University
Identity Work through Prosocial Certifications in Hybrid Organizations
Author: Hyeonjin Cha; Bucknell University
Meta-organizations Addressing Grand Challenges as Effort Integrating Systems
Author: John-Erik Bergkvist; Stockholm School of Economics
Author: Anna Essén; Stockholm University
Author: Magnus Mahring; Stockholm School of Economics